


Stop in the Name of Love (Before I Break Your Window, Come Into Your House, and Beat the Hell Out of You)

by ElyanWhite



Category: Treasure Planet (2002)
Genre: Accidental crime, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Crime, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Cultural fantasy, Disaster Romance, Dumbass Boys, Jokes that go too far, M/M, Mercenaries, Mystery, There's still maybe treasure, kings - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 08:57:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15578286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElyanWhite/pseuds/ElyanWhite
Summary: Jim is accused of stealing from the royal Argentum castle and becomes a criminal hunted kingdom-wide, not knowing that the whole thing is a set-up by the incredibly extra king who wants to ask him out face-to-face.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to the one I'm dedicated to.

Jim Hawkins wasn’t the sort to do bad things.

Well, alright, Jim wasn’t the sort to do _stupid_ things-the sort who did bad things _badly_. The things Jim did were nefariously, maddeningly, _clever_ , and never things that would get him caught.

Jim invented fertilizers for sweet old Mrs. Robin’s tulip garden that let off pheromones to aggravate the native bees whenever the local delinquents went stomping through it. Jim used a homemade sound-magnifier to listen through the dormitory walls of the local academy to ferret out the students who cheated on tests (there was no harm in thinning the competition, even when you were as bright as Jim Hawkins). Jim burned a hole in the back pocket of a bachelor (who refused to believe Jim’s mother wasn’t looking just because she was single) with only a belt-buckle, a mirror, a third-story window, and plenty of spite.

He had never, _ever_ gotten caught.

So of course it would be something he _didn’t_ do that would get him caught in the end.

Something that put his face on all hundred “wanted” posters that had made it from the kingdom’s capital to small town Montressor, one of which was slowly crumpling in Jim’s hand. He’d torn them down wherever he’d seen them, and the paper strips were still dangling from the Benbow Eatery’s billboard to show where he’d found it.

Unfortunately, not before the Benbow’s owner had found it-the owner who happened to be Sarah Hawkins, the mother Jim came home to every day from classes at the academy.

“Jim, you’ve really gone too far this time,” she was insisting furiously, hands akimbo amid the overturned chairs she’d been putting up for the evening. She was furious only because she would be crying otherwise. Jim was furious, too, but only because he was furious.

“You’ll be expelled from Argentum, and the only way we ever got you there was with your test scores paying half the way-”

Also Jim would be _arrested_ , but clearly she wasn’t letting herself think that far, because if Jim was _arrested_ , then…

“I’m not going to be arrested,” Jim blurted out desperately. As soon as he realized he’d done it-for his own benefit, really-he mentally slapped himself. His mother cut herself off sharply and stared at him, strained. Jim’s tongue stumbled a moment around his mouth.

“I mean, I’m...I’ve never even _been_ to the capital! There can’t be any witnesses!”

Well, he had, _once_ , on a sponsored academy field trip, but that was only for a day and that had been months ago. And obviously there _were_ witnesses, if there was a portrait of him.

Jim’s skin always felt hot around his face when he was doubting himself. With his mother studying him so harshly, he felt like he might be sunburning. He got hotter.

“And…and anyway, I must have been set up!”

Jim brandished the poster in front of him. It uncurled sweatily from his hand and he straightened it impatiently. He didn’t look like that. Jim blinked, held the paper up to the light; squinted- _did_ he look like that?

Who had even drawn this picture? The artistry was of an expert quality, obviously capital-employed, but despite its unmistakable imitation of Jim’s face, down to the distinctive deep angles his cheekbones made beneath his eyes and the almost-frown of concentration he wore so frequently, it looked like someone’s fanciful rebel daydream. Since when had Jim’s haircut been that side-shorn and roguish? Since when had Jim’s shoulders been that hearty and muscle-corded? He was a scholar, not a fighter.

From his mother came a shaking gust of a sigh. She wrung her dishtowel through her hands, over and over, half-muttering a lecture or a frightened diatribe.

“Being human in Argentum is hard enough as it is, you know our business can’t keep up with everything the Fel or the Ave can do-”

She wasn’t shouting, at least. And she still hadn’t cried. Even in her complete despair (not far removed from hysteria), Mrs. Hawkins always kept a sort of tight-mouthed reserve that never let her voice get too loud or her will too weak. She fell apart only one piece at a time, and never all at once. This might have been the closest she’d ever come, maybe even the closest since Jim’s father had left, but Jim knew it was only because the Benbow was falling apart nearly as much as she was. It had been in need of repairs and funds to make them with for years-even the bulb Jim had held the incriminating leaf of paper was scratched and badly flickering.

She hadn’t mentioned anything about proving his innocence, though. A pang of alarm went through Jim, followed closely by a pang of hurt. “Mom, you believe me, right?”

She blinked out of her thoughts, dishtowel still tightly twisted against her apron. She started to speak, shook her head, and bit at her lip. “The only mercy is that your name isn’t on this,” was all she eventually said. Jim was stung.

“What does it even say I _stole_?” Jim tried to shuffle the paper straight again-he’d clenched his fist around it unconsciously-and his mother snatched it away from his frustrated efforts, stepping to the light of an unshuttered window for help in deciphering its sweat-smeared ink.

“‘A personal effect of King Longinus’s’,” Mrs. Hawkins read off-as decreed by King Argentum, who was apparently besides the ruler of their country a giant bloody idiot.

“You see!” Jim pounced, stabbing his finger and nearly cracking one of the café’s old floorboards with the force of his stomping. “There’s no way I could have been in the castle! Who would have even let me in to Argentum Castle?”

Argentum was the oldest, most rumored and most revered blood of the whole kingdom-its founding rulers. (Well, not the oldest. Somewhere in the murky history of the kingdom’s founding the name _Flint_ seemed to surface occasionally, but no one really talked about that.) Somewhere in his head, Jim was always in a bit of a tiff with the King of Argentum. _If you were going to put such a ridiculous tariff_ , Jim would imagine himself saying smugly while he read the latest on harbor exports, _you shouldn’t have put it on such a ridiculous product._

_You’re right,_ the king would admit, shame-faced. _But I am royalty and must do ridiculous things for no reason._

Jim imagined this more than most boys his age imagined what household items they could fit their penises into, but he was sure that didn’t mean anything.

Why the king? Because authority was an easy target, and Jim lived an entire suppressed life of petty rebellion under rules. Also because the king-His Highness _Longinus Ionathan Argentum_ -was, well, an Argentum. _The_ Argentum, the very symbol of their country, above any other race of Fel, who was unmistakable for the lumbering feline languor of a big cat-the pride cat, the lion: the greatest, proudest strain of the noble kingdom.

_The hunter_.

“Jim.” His mother was pleading now, she moved forward and took him by the arms, leaning close in her intensity and shaking him with each word. “They will hunt you down. You’ll be caught. Who knows what will happen if you’re tried? There’s no reason you should even be a suspect to begin with! And who will listen to the people from Montressor, especially about a _human_ living with them?”

“I won’t get caught,” said Jim, “if I get there _first_. I’ll prove my innocence, to the king himself!”

Sarah’s fingers stopped pulling and, instead, _seized_. “Jim, do you think you can just walk in and demand an audience with the king?”

But Jim was wild in his anger. “I’ll _fight_ in if I have to,” he retorted, adrenaline-flushed and purpose-pointed.

And right then, he meant it.


	2. Chapter 2

Jim Hawkins (much to his own chagrin had he known it), was meanwhile the same topic of discussion in a closed castle conference room miles away in the grand capital city of Argentum, nearly a full day’s travel away from Montressor on foot (for the winged Ave, it could be halved, and the swiftest Fel could make it in a third).

Around a deeply mahogany table of the utmost expense in import, the King Argentum and his guards’ Captain conferred on matters of utmost importance. The heavy claws of the towering, lazy-eyed king (one eye intelligent black and the other studded over with a ruby-set metal cap) tapped over the wood with veiled impatience.

“It’s been nearly three months, Cap’n Amelia. I don’t know who he is, but I want that boy found.”

Carefully at attention, the Captain, decked in the gold-trimmed cobalt coat of her rank, frowned with faint disapproval-although she was the type of individual whose faintest expressions could be read like messages from the stars over every feature of her face. “Do you not think you may have been too hasty in sending out ‘wanted’ posters? It makes him sound like a criminal, no matter how you view it.”

The king’s broad, golden-furred face creasing into genuine indignance. “Oh, he ain’t a criminal,” he said. “Gust too bright a lad, is all.”

_Utmost_ importance.

Primly groomed and with not a single sash or buckle out of place, the Captain Amelia gave a deep sigh that flattened her ears. “Why must you insist upon speaking like a…a _rapscallion_ , Majesty? You idle far too much of your time down at the ports.”

Not nearly as much time as Longinus would like, they both knew. The king creaked back in his chair, smiling wide with his pointed teeth. “Ahh, but that’s where all the interestin’ and _unusual_ things come in, now, isn’t it?”

The Fel Captain rapped the hilt of her rapier smartly against the table’s edge (it never left her hip). “It is my opinion, sir, that you have far too many interesting and unusual items of business to deal with to possibly want to be finding more. You know, I hear that Ara mercenary Scroop is _already_ set after some bounty on the nameless boy and won’t be satisfied with believing there isn’t one.”

That made the lazing king sit straight up in his chair, with more speed and fluid reflex than would be expected of his size. “Scroop,” he repeated. “That nasty blood-hunter? Bounty? I don’t want to hear either of those words anywhere near our mystery boy.”

The rapier hilt rapped again. “Well, perhaps if it had not been your choice to _publicly distribute damning documents_ , then at least some of this might have been avoided.” The Captain was tart in reprimand. “As a matter of fact, _all_ of it might have been avoided.”

“I had to take _some_ sorta action, at this point.” Argentum slapped a hand to his knee. “Barely three months past, and me out disguised fiddlin’ with one of Flint’s strange old doodads from under the city. Been at it for hours when this handsome, sorta focused-looking lad with a pretty drastic haircut walks up, bold as you please, takes it right out o’ my hand and gives it a twist or two. Next thing I know, the damned thing’s open to the world! And not a sign o’ him since. I don’t even know his _name_.”

The Fel huffed in irritation. “But now this mess-why’s Scroop gotta be involved in the heart o’ things all the time?”

Amelia coughed delicately. “That would be because you make your decisions with unwise and unnecessary haste, your Majesty, especially when you least need to,” she said, with an acerbic tongue. “And often while _drunk_. Some unsavory character is bound to catch hold of the boy soon enough.”

But the king waved a dismissive hand. “Not if I bring the lad in first,” he said, with a grinning leer. “No one’s a better hunter than ol’ Silver.”

Amelia started. “You mean to say you plan on going after him yourself?”

“Disguised, o’ course.”

After a spell of silence, the Captain pinched her eyes shut to prevent her headache from encroaching any further to her temples. “It very highly fascinates me that you have not yet been assassinated.”

Longinus- _Silver_ -chuckled, with all his body and belly. “Your words as pretty of the rest of you, Cap’n.” He worked his way out from the chair and table-really, toy-like compared to him. “I’ll leave business here to you.”

But the Captain stood up straighter. “Your Majesty. Do you mind revealing exactly what you would have me believe this man stole from you?”

Silver, already on his way to the door, turned back in a whirl of his great, leather-smelling overcoat, spreading his arms (the one broad and muscled, the other angled and metal) wide in theatricality. “My big ol’ heart,” he declared with overwrought emotion.

“Really.” The Captain was unimpressed.

Silver’s tragic air held a moment, but then his face darkened by rapid degrees into a deeply cunning, spark-catching smirk.

“You might also say,” amended Silver, in a sound that was low and animal, a growl or a purr or something more possessive still. “If you were so inclined, that he…aye, he _captured_ my interest.”

 

 


End file.
